Her Longing
by Shoreland Scav
Summary: The Ball pines for her star-crossed lover. Item 32: Warcraft 3, Super Mario Brothers 2, and Pong. LARP one and write a steamy fanfic crossover for the other two. 8 points


She had known a lot of lovers in her day. Their smooth, rectangular surfaces hit her curves and sent her coming back for more. It was her habit to take them two at a time, but three, and sometimes even four were not uncommon. She danced with abandon across the screen, night after night, bouncing for those bespectacled, awkward boys who came to hold their joysticks and press their hot buttons, keeping their eyes on her. Her brilliant white surface shifted and swayed across the inky blackness of the world behind her, and as she bounced and was bounced by those long, hard platforms, she was happy.

But never for long. Time after time, no matter who slipped their quarters in her slit, those platforms kept getting smaller, the longer they played. It didn't matter how they did it. The boys that came to her and placed their cash in her money slot beseechingly were almost always virgin to her tricks, and tended to fumble, shifting their joysticks slowly and clumisly, sending her boarded bounce-buddies wherever she wasn't, no matter how loudly she screamed "'LEFT! FARTHER LEFT! NO, A LITTLE RIGHT!" Then, inevitably, a final "DAMN YOU!" as they missed and the game ended without satisfying her. Her breath caught with excitement, the first few times they rammed it into her, demanding a minute, ten minutes, an hour of pleasure, but these tended to overcompensate, clearly trying to prove how tough they were; their focus was always on themselves, and never on her safety, and it showed. She longed for a lover who would send her bouncing faster, make her glow with the kind of pleasure she knew she could feel, was meant to feel.

That all changed on the Thursday afternoon when they installed the Mario kiosk across the aisle, just in time for the Friday night special. She didn't understand what the appeal of the Mario game was, at first. Mario was a [how many?]-bit hotshot with an incorporated background and flashy MIDI music, and she had to confess that she was jealous when the boys who used to watch her with concentration and fervor started paying more attention to Mario. Sure, there was a girl in it, a girl wearing the kind of luxurious pink dress, rich, flaxen hair and dazzling golden crown they probably dreamed about IRL, a girl with bendable knees and hips that they could dream about bending for their satisfaction, a skirt to raise, eyes to close, a mouth to open in silent- or not silent- ecstasy. But where were her breasts? She, on the other hand, was breasts on top and a voluptuous tuckus on the bottom, one beautiful, unified curve. She was elegant. Mathematical, in fact. Why didn't any of these boys love mathematics?

After a while, though, the game started to appeal to her. She liked watching Mario pursue Peach, sometimes with Luigi as wingman, and she had to confess that she fantasized sometimes about the two of them tag-teaming Peach the same way her lovers bounced her. She pitied Peach, too modest to ever take off her white gloves, run her legs slowly from her ankles and up, lifting her skirt as she exposed her shins, her thighs, and sometimes thought about herself assisting Peach in this way, pushing the skirt up herself to reveal the goddess she was repressing. She didn't fantasize about having legs, herself, or arms, or a head, or a mouth or fingers or fists to give Peach pleasure beyond the kind she knew could exist... but she cried for her sometimes, recently liberated enough to throw vegetables at enemies and run around like the male characters, but always alone, and always too innocent to know love.

Her primary reason for watching, as her dwindling clientele now ran their fingers across the surfaces of the other kiosk, was the platforms.

Not Nintendo, of course. She was a daughter of Atari; the Nintendo empire was her hated enemy, even more so as they pushed her programmers increasingly into the fringe, and, she feared, off the market someday entirely. But as her platforms bounced her between them, increasingly rarely now, she put cheerful red-orange brick behind their brilliant white surfaces in her mind.

She felt a little dirty, sometimes, like she was cheating, when she watched Mario jump on platform after platform, topping enemies and making them roll over for him, sometimes sending the shells of those Koopa Troopas spinning in ecstasy. These platforms weren't like the platforms that had bounced her. Hers were smooth, yes, but flat, and lacked the kind of texture exhibited by the Mario platforms. Hers were uninteresting, and although she always took them in groups, playing with them in the same way, so many times per night, night after night, had quickly gotten boring. These, on the other hand, were rugged, much more multi-dimensional, and had color to them. Most importantly, though, they lined up, seemingly endlessly, and no matter whether the 1P came to them on top or on bottom, a significant number of them had question mark blocks to keep it interesting. What would Mario find when he jumped them? Deadly danger? Stars of pleasure and experience? Or- her breath caught, and she wanted to run her curves across any flat surfaces with desire- would the 1P actually get bigger? Would the music change, as she accumulated this experience that actually meant something, pursued levels that changed and kept her interest in a way that the velveteen black and brilliant white sometimes didn't? These platforms were much more submissive, though equally rigid, partners- but if she bounced them, slowly at first, then faster, harder, the way she was used to bouncing the lovers given to her by God and her programmers, would they send her off the screen or keep her, let her indulge herself on their rich, detailed universe?

She knew it could never be. She was a daughter of Atari, and this was a world tightly controlled by the horrible Nintendo empire. Nintendo would drive her people off the market, and, perhaps, into extinction, someday. She lived in a monochromatic world, which simply could not compete with her competitor's. But she knew that, even if she never told a soul about her dark, secret fantasy of that bright, colorful world, she, it, and the love they shared would live on forever.


End file.
